The West Fork plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
Sunny
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4.52 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1949. The next wettest, 3.91 inches, fell in 1993.
West Fork’s center stands about 1,340 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 1,270 ft to 1,960 ft, a difference of 690 ft: hilly country. The highest named summit within 15 miles is Denny Mountain, about 2,390 ft, 13 miles east-southeast.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Pitkin Limestone, Fayetteville Shale (including the Wedington Sandstone member), and Batesville Sandstone (including the Hindsville Limestone Member) (sandstone, shale, limestone), from the Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old.
The section below crosses 5 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 17×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Sandstone, black-shale. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 8 mi of the line.
Sandstone, shale, limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
Shale, sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 5 mi of the line.
Limestone. Age: Carboniferous, 324 to 359 million years old. About 3 mi of the line.
Sandstone. Age: Carboniferous, 299 to 324 million years old. About 0.9 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in West Fork reaches the Gulf of America by way of the West Fork White, the White River and the Mississippi: about 1,290 river miles.
Lakes on the way: Table Rock Lake and Beaver Lake.
620 miles of the trip are on the Mississippi.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of West Fork; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
West Fork has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 89° in July; winter nights fall to about 25° in January. A normal year brings about 6 inches of snow; with the rain, that comes to about 47 inches of water.
On November 14 West Fork normally reaches 60° and falls to 36°. The record high is 78°, in 1999; the record low 14°, in 2014. The most rain on this date, 1.99 in, fell in 1958.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1949 at Fayetteville Drake Field, 6 miles north, 100 ft lower. NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
